“Love of Beethoven’s works threads through Biret’s life like a red ribbon. Her studio recordings and live concerts show this in an unequivocal language…Next to the Piano Concertos, the Triple Concerto and the Choral Fantasy she has also recorded and performed on stage all the Piano Sonatas and Symphony Transcriptions becoming perhaps the only artist to reach this level of completeness…This knowledge of Beethoven one hears in every nuance in Idil Biret’s playing.”
— Piano News (Germany)
“Listening to Beethoven through Liszt’s keyboard transcriptions can put a fresh perspective on these familiar symphonies. Idil Biret has taken on the complete cycle, and I admire her taste, technique and sound musical decisions.”
— New York Magazine
“Biret’s performance of the 8th Symphony (in Milan) succeeded in the sustained tension; the prominence of logic in building up the colours; the autonomy as well as the interplay of the parts…Biret conquers by dominating the whole, with an implacable left hand in the Allegretto or with lightliness in the fury of Allegro vivace.”
— Corriera Della Serra (Italy)
“Idil Biret not only recorded all nine of the Beethoven symphonies in less than a year but, in a superhuman feat which astounded all those who know about music, she also publicly performed all of them in four recitals at the Montpellier festival in France. To learn and also memorise scores of such length and difficulty in such a short time is a mind-boggling achievement.”
— Fonoforum Germany
“From the outset of the 1st Symphony one feels that Idil Biret grasps the size of Beethoven’s style. The polyphony is laid out in a relaxed way with little indulgence in point making. She keeps the big line and yet is thankfully sparing in her use o fortissimos. The piano tone is sumptuous. Biret’s gentle and almost sensuous sonorities are really captivating. One is reminded that her mentor has been Wilhelm Kempff.”
— Gramophone (UK)
“A supreme mastery of tempi, sonorities, polyphony and of course technique permits Biret to embrace all the moods of the great Beethoven and gives her playing a symphonic depth rarely heard until now.”
— Le Nouvel Observateur (France)